MUMBAI, INDIA: Capgemini and SAP SE announced a joint initiative to help clients in the discrete manufacturing industries to manage their digital transformation as they seek to maximize the potential of Industry 4.0, the IoT and innovative manufacturing techniques.

Olivier Sevillia, Member of the Group Executive Board and Group Head of Digital Services, Capgemini said: “Across industries, clients are facing their greatest organizational challenge yet as they seek to digitally transform. Nowhere is this truer than in manufacturing, where the dazzling promise of Industry 4.0 is now being offset by the growing appreciation of the complexities involved in making digital manufacturing a reality. Through our extensive experience supporting some of the world’s leading organizations to digitally transform we’re deeply familiar with the challenges they face and how to meet them. SAP is a natural partner, not only because of our long history together, but because their suite of solutions offers an ideal platform to power this change.”

The initiative aims to address these challenges by combining SAP’s suite of digital solutions with Capgemini’s global expertise in consulting, insights and data, cloud and digital manufacturing.

Capgemini’s Digital Manufacturing Services offer launched earlier in 2016 supports manufacturing clients in building smart connected plants and products, and adopting new business models for the digital age. Capgemini will also utilize an agile model for business transformation based on its Digital Transformation Framework specifically tailored for the manufacturing industry and spanning the exploration, design and development of specific solutions to enable new business models and scenarios.

Rob Enslin, Member of the Executive Board of SAP SE and President of Global Customer Operations, SAP, said: “Today’s announcement is another example of how we are exploring new ways to co-innovate around SAP S/4HANA and SAP HANA Cloud Platform in order to help our customers gain a competitive advantage in the digital economy.”

As part of the initiative, the solution suite to support this model includes SAP S/4HANA as the digital core, with SAP Hybris solutions and SAP HANA Cloud Platform, providing data in real-time across both the front-end and back-end applications.

Capgemini and SAP plan to co-innovate and invest jointly in order to develop new applications and extensions on SAP HANA Cloud Platform, as well as engage with an ecosystem of start-ups and vendors in the manufacturing space to provide clients with end-to-end solutions.

Further, this initiative intends to help manufacturers create smart, connected products, assets and operations that offer the potential for time-to-market reduction, productivity gains, cost savings, new revenue streams and new business models.